SSMS 17.4 provides support for almost all feature areas on SQL Server 2008 through the latest SQL Server 2017, which is now generally available.

In addition to enhancements and bug fixes, SSMS 17.4 comes with an exciting new feature: SQL Vulnerability Assessment!

What is Vulnerability Assessment?

SQL Vulnerability Assessment (VA) is your one-stop-shop to discover, track and remediate potential database vulnerabilities. It can be used as an excellent preventative security measure, providing visibility into your security state and offering actionable steps to investigate, manage and resolve security issues and enhance your database fortifications. It is designed to be usable even for non-security-experts – getting started and seeing an initial actionable report takes only a few seconds.

Vulnerability Assessment report in SSMS

VA truly enables you to focus your attention on the highest impact actions you can take to proactively improve your database security stature! In addition, if you have data privacy requirements, or need

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https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlsecurity/2017/12/11/sql-vulnerability-assessment-now-available-for-sql-server-2012-and-up/Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlsecurity/2017/12/11/sql-vulnerability-assessment-now-available-for-sql-server-2012-and-up/ SQL Vulnerability Assessment has been available for preview on Azure SQL Database for a couple of months, and has now been released on SSMS 17.4, supporting scanning of SQL Server 2012 and up. Whether on-premises or on READ MORE

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https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/new-in-ssms-always-on-availability-group-latency-reports/Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/new-in-ssms-always-on-availability-group-latency-reports/ With SQL Server 2012 we introduced Always On Availability Groups, and the Always On Availability Group Dashboard in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). This dashboard can be utilized by database administrators to view the current health of READ MORE

There’s never been a better time to start migrating your database to the cloud. Getting ahead in business today means moving to the cloud so that your company can grow and succeed.

The Azure Database Migration Service Preview is the quickest and easiest way for businesses to migrate on-premises databases to the cloud. It’s a fully managed migration service designed to work together with our time-tested migration engines such as the Data Migration Assistant, the Database Experimentation Assistant, and SQL Server Migration Assistant. These tools are tuned to ensure the best migration experience, whether upgrading from legacy versions of Microsoft SQL Server or moving from sources such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MySQL, and others. The new service uses a guided, easy-to-implement process to streamline tasks. Regular operations can continue normally during the migration.

Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview uses this functionality to provide rich orchestration capabilities that enable you to organize your databases into project(s) and perform source assessment, schema and data conversion, and validation activities. These activities can be assigned to one

Perhaps you saw the keynote at the recent PASS 2017 Summit where Microsoft demonstrated the performance of the world’s first enterprise-class “diskless database”. This demonstration showed how Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server partnered together to deliver > 5x performance on analytic queries directly against storage at up to 50 percent of the cost.

Recently HPE published a new world record 1TB TPC-H benchmark result¹ using this configuration with their DL380 Gen10 Server showing 1,009,065 QphH at an incredible price/performance of $0.47 USD per QphH. Performance and price are achieved by combining the power of SQL Server 2017, HPE’s scalable persistent memory, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 SP3 Persistent Memory Support.

HPE’s scalable persistent memory is a new innovation which combines standard memory with the persistence of standard storage. It allows database engines like SQL Server 2017 to retrieve data from its data files in a matter of seconds.

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https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/upgrade-your-sql-server-to-scale-before-adding-new-hardware/Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/upgrade-your-sql-server-to-scale-before-adding-new-hardware/ In SQL Server Tiger team, we closely partner with our customers and partners to ensure they can successfully run and scale their Tier 1 mission critical workloads and applications on SQL Server. Based on our experience and READ MORE

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https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/how-we-made-backups-faster-with-sql-server-2017/Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/how-we-made-backups-faster-with-sql-server-2017/ In my previous blog post on enhancements in SQL Server 2017, we briefly introduced improved backup performance for smaller databases in SQL Server 2017 on high end servers. In the recent PASS Summit 2017, Pedro and I READ MORE

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https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/perfect-statistics-histogram-in-just-few-steps/Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sql_server_team/perfect-statistics-histogram-in-just-few-steps/ A similar question about statistics came to the team twice this week: why does updating with fullscan result in fewer histogram steps than when doing a sampled scan? The answer is: the number of histogram steps can READ MORE

Recently, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new world record TPC-H 10TB benchmark result¹ using SQL Server 2017 and Windows Server 2016 on their new DL580 Gen10 Server. This new amazing result at 1,479,748 Composite Query-per-Hour (QphH) was achieved at price/performance of .95 USD per QphH continuing to show SQL Server’s leadership in price and performance.

HPE also announced the first TPC-H 3TB result² on a 2-socket system using SQL Server 2017 and Windows Server 2016 with their DL380 Gen Server. They achieved a stellar 1,014,374 QphH on only 2-sockets. These results continue to show how powerful SQL Server can be to handle your analytic query workloads including data warehouses.

SQL Server also is a proven leader for OLTP workloads. Lenovo recently announced a new world-record TPC-E benchmark

Recently, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new world record TPC-H 10TB benchmark result¹ using SQL Server 2017 and Windows Server 2016 on their new DL580 Gen10 Server. This new amazing result at 1,479,748 Composite Query-per-Hour (QphH) was achieved at price/performance of .95 USD per QphH continuing to show SQL Server’s leadership in price and performance.

HPE also announced the first TPC-H 3TB result² on a 2-socket system using SQL Server 2017 and Windows Server 2016 with their DL380 Gen Server. They achieved a stellar 1,014,374 QphH on only 2-sockets. These results continue to show how powerful SQL Server can be to handle your analytic query workloads including data warehouses.

SQL Server also is a proven leader for OLTP workloads. Lenovo recently announced a new world-record TPC-E benchmark